I See You

Dean's travel schedule has geared back up, so the boys have gotten to have a few video calls with him....can you see the love? While Jack's still a little enthralled with watching himself make silly faces, we're hoping the technology helps us miss each other a little less.

Leona Lewis - it's a beautiful song, especially if you can ignore all the blue weirdos in the video ;-)

Just another night

Dean is home and all is right with our world tonite.
The boys enjoying their 'working dinner'. It seems like they come home with a whole new vocabulary of working types of phrases from school like this and 'finish-up folder' and a whole lotta others I can't remember at the moment. One of Harry's favorite is 'working ___' - he will seem to do just about anything if I phrase it just right ;-)

You may remember these Valentine's mailboxes that the boys made a few years ago. Jack came up with a brilliant, sweet idea this year. He and Harry put special notes and pictures in the mailboxes for us, and we do the same for them. You always know there's a little bit of love in the box when the flag is up....
......looks like a little sweet for our sweeties!

I try to keep things picked up, but I can't complain too much when the 'mess' is stacks of books they are enjoying. It's been a mix of fiction and non-fiction lately, and they are really enjoying their reading club at school. It's the first time they have been in a real learning environment together - we'll see how it goes. My hopes go out to their teachers that it goes well!

Jack has had a real struggle this week with being too talkative and interrupting. If have no idea where he gets that :blush:, let alone the fact that he gets a double dose! It's been quite a while since he's had a 'yellow day' which means his teacher had to warn him about his behavior....he's had TWO this week, so he wrote his teacher this email:

Let's hope the self-control kicks back in soon! He's awfully sweet, so I have faith
Cat Stevens

Santa, please, will you help me

We are in full-on Christmas mode, and I found two of the biggest little helpers today

Jack was ready to demonstrate their new aprons....Dean will be happy to see the remote control pocket...sort of mans up the apron, right??

Jack's all over the helping right now - cards will be arriving with various Jack-isms...writing, stamping, address labeling. Please know that he spent as much time choosing the exact-right label as I did writing ;-)

Harry also pitched in, but mostly just modeled his gappy smile and sang carols to us as we worked .... he noticed the second top tooth is loose, so guess what he's been humming all day. He thinks it's great that he won't have to change the lyrics if he loses both teeth before Christmas.

He was the first to notice the snow this morning and immediately said "We must stop SCHOOL from coming...but how?" They've both memorized the Grinch and apply him whenever possible.

This last picture reminded me of one of when they first started using the computer way back when

Toni Braxton's Santa Please

Days Go By

Life is just happening here

They've both gotten completely into using the computer - so far, it's for good (lots of learning sites) but we are having to limit them so they don't morph into computers. I remember this post when they first found out how much fun computers can be.

Why do I think that's so cute?!

The week is full of Dr. Seuss fun, and Harry made himself some silly socks for Fox In Socks yesterday. They included his favorite invention of late - the pimped-out bathtub on wheels:

Keith Urban

And in my head I Paint A Picture

It's all about the Wacky around here lately, and Jack has been getting all artsy with the camera. Here's what we've been up to the last couple of weeks....

Jack and Dean gettin' silly wit' it!

All the Valentine's love scatter

He tried sitting down and taking pix of me - lovely

Harry was a much better goofball

I mentioned the artsy part, right??

He spent a while creating this little tableau

They spent a lot of time playing computer games during the snowcation....mostly educational, so I just looked at it as an extended computer lab ;-) He did a great job catching Harry's reflection (and I thought they were watching Rocky, but can't tell who that is in the background)

Amy Winehouse's Valerie

Over and over

Not sure why I'm humming that old Tommy James song, but I can't get it out of my head - maybe because everything's feeling repetitious today...not in a bad way, just a comforting one. Hope you're enjoying the week!

The boys have been doing a lot more on the computer lately, and we tried Starfall yesterday - I'm linking the games with the pix and description, if you're interested. It's a much more educational site, it'll sound out each word which is nice for those multi-modal learners since they can see the letters change colors as they are being read - this game Word Hunt is fun and introduces sentence structure - Jack is finding a verb on this screen. He liked this game a lot

Appropo...this game lets you build a snowman and uses the 10 Little Indians song
Right up in his grill :-)

Harry had a great time with the Car Race game - this is his 'vroom'
Reading along with the sentences (who knows *what's* up with that hair?!)

He's having a great time

and just a little bit proud of himself

They also played a lot with scholastic and nickjr sites, but this Clifford Winter Lost & Found game seemed appropriate for the weather - have fun!

Welcome To The World

The boys love Word World, a cute little half-hour show on PBS. The characters' voices are pretty grating, but it has really increased their reading!

Jack and I were scouting good sites on the internet today and we happened on the World World website - this is the intro page for parents and teachers:

http://pbskids.org/wordworld/parentsandteachers/index.html

Enjoy!

10CC

WHAT was I thinkin'?

So, I will admit that I'm pretty much addicted to the Game Arcade on TwinStuff, and I may have made the biggest mistake ever.....

Harry Hears No Evil, Jack Speaks No Evil

Jack's new favorite is Gold Miner and Harry love Easter Bunny - they are actually pretty good at both games!

Harry multitasks between the game and his cars, while Jack concentrates on the game

Dierks Bentley